Musashino as Utopia

Professor Toshio WatanabeResearch Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures

About the Lecture

The city of Edo (present day Tokyo) was created in a place generally called Musashino, which was only sparsely populated, and then grew into a vast metropolis. Is it possible to re-position Tokyo so that it could reconcile with the notion of Musashino as utopia?

As the last lecture in this lecture series to investigate the future history of Tokyo through nature, city and art, Professor Watanabe will take up the theme of Musashino as utopia and will explore how Tokyo has been expressed in the arts through nature found in Tokyo and Tokyo as a metropolis.

About the Speaker

Professor Toshio Watanabe
University of East Anglia (Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures)
University of the Arts London (TrAIN Research Centre)

Toshio Watanabe is a researcher and university professor based in England since 1977, shortly after completing his doctorate at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He founded the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) at the University of Arts London in 2004. Key publications include Ruskin in Japan 1890-1940: Nature for Art, Art for Life (Gen. Ed.), Koriyama City Museum of Art, 1997. (Winner of 1998 Japan Festival Prize and of 1999 Gesner Gold Award). He is currently Vice-President of Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA) Bureau and a member of the Advisory Board for Tate Research Centre: Asia-Pacific.

About the Lecture Series

Tokyo Futures, 1868-2020 | UK-Japan lecture series

From the middle of the nineteenth century, Japan, like the rest of the world, was shaken by the transformations that followed its encounter with industry and empire. The country entered a new era, named after the Meiji emperor, and embarked on an ambitious programme of modernization, centred on Tokyo, its new capital.

The UK-Japan Lecture Series, consisting of six lectures held in the UK and Japan, will explore the upheaval, as it played out in the people’s understanding and experience of art, nature and the city. How did these come together in shaping the new capital? How did the Meiji experience leave its mark on city and country in the twentieth century? And how might we draw on this history as we head towards the second Tokyo Olympics in 2020?

This lecture is co-organised by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, the Meiji Jingu Intercultural Research Institute and the Department of Asia, the British Museum.

‘Art’
12 February 2016 | British Museum, London | Dr Sarah Teasley ( Royal College of Art)
19 March 2016 | Kyoto University of Arts and Design, Gaien Campus, Tokyo | Professor Watanabe Toshio (Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, University of the Arts London)

The UK-Japan Lecture Series is supported by the Toshiba International Foundation and the Japan Foundation.

It is co-organised by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, the Meiji Jingu Intercultural Research Institute, the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), University of the Arts London (UAL).